ELECTION UPDATE: Recount continues today

After an all-day count yesterday the Guam Election Commission found no major discrepancies in the tabulated numbers versus the hand-counted numbers - however, counting for other discrepancies found will be done today.

Democratic board member Chris Carillo moved to do a hand recount of the vice mayor race in Agat.

A 14 vote difference in the mayoral race in precinct 2 in Asan/Maina also raised concerns for the board so they also moved to do a hand recount today.

Board Chairman Joe Mesa, through a personal audit, found that over a 100 votes were not counted for in the non-partisan race in Asan/Maina so he wanted to get those counted today as well.

Mesa said continuing with the recount today will keep the momentum going which has gone throughout the weekend.

The board plans to certify the results by Nov. 19.

The election commission along with volunteers from both political parties hand counted ballots for most of Friday and yesterday.

Yesterday's counting began around 9 a.m. and didn't end until about 10 p.m.

Precinct 4 and precinct 13 A were recounted by hand Saturday.

In precinct 4 in Agat two Democratic senatorial candidates Adoplho Palacios and Leah Beth Naholowaa received 0 and 1, respectively, on the first count. The recount revealed those candidates actually received 264 and 178 votes in that precinct, respectively, and that a dozen other senatorial candidates also were shorted votes. after major discrepancies were found in the vote numbers on Friday.

The commission also found that ballots from Precinct 13A in Agana Heights were counted twice.

After running the ballots through a tabulator Friday, the GEC board discovered that all the votes tallies had been doubled but were otherwise accurate.

These two precincts were recounted by hand through most of Saturday. The hand counted tallies were compared to the tabulated numbers from Friday. There were no major discrepancies found in the numbers and most numbers matched up. A few candidates lost or gained one to three votes, but not enough to change any election results.

Another phase of yesterday's work was to randomly choose two precincts to recount on the tabulator to check if the machines were providing good and accurate numbers. The tabulator machines known as "Fred" and "Francisco" were used to tabulate the numbers.

The two precincts chosen were 14A, Mongmong/Toto/Maite and 16, Mangilao. The numbers were almost identical to the previous tabulation plus or minus one or two.Board Chairman Joe Mesa said the numbers were found to be accurate.

Republican board member John Taitano also said he was happy and humbled to report that the numbers presented were accurate.

Republican party chairman Mike Benito said he was grateful for the commission for doing the recount and Democratic party Executive Director Carlo Branch agreed.